


the simple con

by cleardishwashers



Category: Ocean's Eleven Trilogy (Movies)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, ITS ABOUT THE TRUST OK..... THE VULNERABILITY........., M/M, Pre-Canon, Trust, Violence, i think, my god these bitches gay! good for them!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:27:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26688154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cleardishwashers/pseuds/cleardishwashers
Summary: One of Keller’s men, the one with the beat-up leather jacket and truly impressive handlebar mustache, recognizes Danny from a thing with a guy in a Mediterranean museum, and the next thing Rusty knows is Danny Ocean— Danny Ocean, not Will Calhoun, because of course Handlebar knows Danny’s real name— is being forced to his knees, two guns trained on his head, on the floor of the warehouse. It suddenly seems all too drafty.-things don't always go according to plan!
Relationships: Danny Ocean/Rusty Ryan
Comments: 18
Kudos: 77





	the simple con

Really, it’s supposed to be a simple con.

Rusty’s hanging on 23, Danny’s just hit 25, but even though Rusty can grow twice as much facial hair as Danny, he’s still blond and baby-faced and Oceans grey early (whatever the fuck relevancy that has, Rusty doesn’t know, because Danny’s still got a head of hair so dark it makes Rusty want to run his hands through it and see if they disappear), so Danny gets to be the young-but-established fence and Rusty is forced into the role of College Graduate Looking For Work (and not the type that requires a CV). It’s not all bad, though, because while Danny’s rotting away in the motel room or trying to sweet-talk Keller into the shallow domain they call trust, Rusty gets to hang around Keller’s crew and listen to them talk about all the shit they’ve stolen over beer and Rusty-provided Snickers bars. And Keller might be a grade-A douche, the rest of his crew too, but they sure have stolen a lot.

And that’s where it goes wrong. One of Keller’s men, the one with the beat-up leather jacket and truly impressive handlebar mustache, recognizes Danny from a thing with a guy in a Mediterranean museum, and the next thing Rusty knows is Danny Ocean— Danny Ocean, not Will Calhoun, because of _course_ Handlebar knows Danny’s real name— is being forced to his knees, two guns trained on his head, on the floor of the warehouse. It suddenly seems all too drafty.

Danny’s still grinning that stupid Danny Ocean grin. No wonder Handlebar’d recognized him.

“The fuck are you trying to do, screw _me_ over?” Keller spits, circling Danny. To his credit, Danny doesn’t crane his neck, doesn’t do anything but let his eyes drift left as Keller walks behind him. Rusty wants to swallow. His throat’s too dry. “Bad idea, Calhoun. Or Ocean. Whoever the fuck you are.”

“Listen,” says Danny, and then Keller delivers a boot to Danny’s Armani-draped side that effectively renders him speechless. And what good is that silver tongue of his if there’s no oxygen in his lungs to propel it?

Not that Rusty’s helping much. He stays still and quiet and recites in his head why he’s the detail guy, why he’s the _grab_ part of _smash and grab,_ why he is much better equipped to handle his best friend getting caught and hung to dry better than Danny would be. _Y’know, my dad told me I’d be too soft for this game,_ Danny had once said. Rusty had just snorted. But then some guy fucked Bobby over on a job, big-time— _lose-your-job-and-get-hauled-to-jail-time,_ quite nearly— and Danny hadn’t rested until the guy was destitute. He was just barely sloppy about it, too, and then Rusty’d finally realized what that soft spot might mean. For both of them.

But he’s still here, because he’s the detail guy, he’s the _grab_ part of _smash and grab,_ and he’s the one who’s better equipped to defend his partner’s soft spots.

There’s nothing he can do as Keller’s boot connects another time and leaves Danny crumpled over. He thinks that this is the worst situation he could possibly be in, and then Keller looks at _him._ “You,” Keller snaps. “Mikey.”

“Yeah, boss?” Rusty says, his voice sure and steady and everything he isn’t.

“You wanna prove yourself?”

 _Not in the slightest._ “Hell yes.” There’s gotta be some reservoir of charm, somewhere in him, keeping his sentences smooth and his grin lazy, but all he can think is _we didn’t plan for this, I didn’t plan for this, please don’t make me shoot him._ “What, you want me to shoot ‘im?”

Keller laughs, raspier than Danny’s labored wheezing. “Wait,” Danny manages to choke out.

“Nah,” Keller tells Danny, giving him another kick. _At least nothing’s cracked yet,_ Rusty tells himself. “Mikey. Loving the enthusiasm, but I don’t wanna drive all the way out to the wharf for nothing. Just rough ‘im up a little.”

Rusty steps forward, and for the first time since Danny’s knees had hit the floor (he almost looked like he was praying, and isn't that funny) they make eye contact.

Danny’s eyes are crinkled at the corners, even as he gasps out breaths like a fish out of water. There’s emotion in that familiar brown, and not the helplessness or anger Rusty was expecting to see. No, this is ten times worse— it’s _trust._ He’s _trusting_ Rusty to break him kindly. What the hell is Rusty supposed to do with Danny’s trust in this situation, except ball it up in his fist and hope it doesn’t shatter when his knuckles hit Danny’s jaw, his temple, his _nose—_ oh, Christ, that’s broken, _shit—_ “the face is worthless, kid, go for the stomach—” _jackass, the stomach means he can’t breathe, and if he can’t breathe he can’t talk—_

“The feds,” Danny cuts across, every breath labored (and yes, Rusty’s gonna take the coward’s way out and pretend he doesn’t see the blood on Danny’s teeth), “are after you.”

Keller holds out a hand. Rusty’s never felt so grateful to walk away from Danny, away to the middle of Keller’s gang, where he doesn’t have to see the evidence of the fucking nightmare fuel he's just delivered unto himself. His burning knuckles are evidence enough. “The hell do you mean?”

“I _mean,”_ Danny says through clenched teeth, “they’re looking into you. For everything. The Manet… the Rodin… the Degas… good job on that one, by the way—”

“I ain’t in the business of compliments, Ocean,” Keller snarls. “Get to the point. Namely, why you’re here, and why I shouldn’t let Mikey here beat you ‘till you need a feeding tube.” _Because Mikey would probably throw up,_ Rusty thinks.

“I’m here ‘cause my employer wanted to see if you were still profitable,” Danny says. “Nobody wants to go down with you.”

“Who’s your employer?”

“Saul Bloom.”

Now _that_ changes things, even if Saul is in Aruba right now, tanning his wrinkly hide with not a clue of what’s taking place here. Rusty would grin, if his knuckles didn’t hurt so bad.

“But if you didn’t know the goddamn _Feds_ were onto you…” Danny trails off, and Keller blanches.

“Tell ‘im I’ll take care o’ the _goddamn Feds,”_ Keller says. “If he needs somethin’ stolen, I can do it.”

“I’ll tell him you said that,” Danny says. “Now, are you gonna let me go home, or am I gonna tell Saul you prefer sloppy operations?”

Keller waves his hand at the two guys with guns. “Get out,” he tells Danny. “An’ don’t ever lie to me again.”

“I’ll take that under advisement,” Danny says with a smirk, and then he gets up and limps out the front of the warehouse.

Rusty finally lets out a breath. He’ll see Danny at the motel, and then they’ll talk-but-not, and they’ll cut and run from this town altogether. Maybe they’ll send the Caldwells after Keller, as a parting gift. He’s just gotta make it through the rest of the day first. “Y’did good, kid,” Keller says, clapping him on the back. He feels a wave of nausea ride through him. _Fuck,_ it’s gonna be a long four hours.

…

He walks into the motel room and immediately hones in on Danny, sprawled across one of the beds with what appears to be a ten-pound bag of ice, wrapped in two towels, laying on his ribs. “What the _fuck,_ Daniel,” Rusty sighs, for lack of something better to say.

“Hey, Rus,” Danny mumbles, clearly the tiniest bit high on _some_ sort of painkiller. Rusty’s not going to ask. “You probably shouldn’t. I think that Benadryl was expired. By a lot.”

“Goddamnit,” Rusty says. He sits on the bed next to Danny, and he rubs at his knuckles. Danny grabs his wrist, unerringly accurate for someone with his eyes closed, and places the back of Rusty’s hand on the damp towel. The cold feels good.

“Y’know, I think I know the back of your hands better than the back of my own,” Danny says casually.

Rusty tilts his head.

“Well, I look at your hands whenever you have to sew something up,” Danny says. “Nice distraction.”

“Speaking of,” says Rusty, still far too tired from his evening with Keller and Co. to do anything but sway with his train of thought (but it’s okay, because even if said train is making much wider turns than usual— wait, no, that’s trucks— Danny’s always been able to keep up), “what happened—”

“Was—”

“I don’t wanna hear it, man,” Rusty says, readjusting his hand's position against the ice. “At least have the decency to hate me a little for it.”

“You wouldn’t if it were the other way around,” Danny counters.

Rusty snorts. “You think too highly of yourself.” He’s right, of course, but Rusty’s not gonna say it.

“But I’m—”

“Yeah, don’t rub it in. Bad enough that I’m now responsible for you talking like Donald Duck.”

Danny actually sounds pretty normal for someone whose nose is broken, even if he is slurring half his words. “Rus.”

“Danny.”

“I trusted you—”

“And that’s the problem.”

“No, that’s the solution,” Danny says. “I trust you, you trust me.”

“‘There’s no room for fear in this business,’” Rusty says, echoing something Reuben— or was it Saul? Maybe it was Molly— had said at least a decade ago. “Yeah, well, now that’s another thing I gotta haul around. Your trust.”

“It’ll help you work off all that chocolate,” Danny mumbles. “God, it’s a miracle how you’re not—”

“You’re the one who’s predisposed—”

“You know my genetic history?”

“Two Christmases ago, when Debbie—”

“Oh, and her hot blonde girlfriend. I remember.”

“Surprising. How expired was that medication, anyway?”

“Very.”

“Nice to see—”

“Well, it’s not like—”

Rusty laughs. “You’re one to talk.”

“That was _six years ago.”_

“And yet you still don’t eat Almond Joy.”

Danny’s hand, so sure of itself when reaching for Rusty’s wrist earlier, comes up to push in the general vicinity of Rusty’s face. Rusty lets him do it, lets his palm graze against his cheekbone with all the force of a gentle wave. "Hey," Danny says.

"Hey," Rusty replies, looking anywhere but the butterfly bandage on Danny's nose.

"We could still—"

"No."

Danny cracks an eye open, lazy surprise at Rusty's vehemence swimming in his iris. "You—"

"Don't push your luck, Ocean," Rusty says. "Finishing this…"

"Alright," Danny says. "I hear New York is nice this time of year."

"No, Debbie's still mad at you for Christmas," Rusty says.

"Well, how was I supposed to—"

"You could've—"

"That would've defeated the point."

"And getting sucker punched by your sister didn't?"

"That's—"

"No it's not."

Danny sighs. "No, it's not."

They lapse into a comfortable silence, one Rusty is loathe to break, but he still can't shake the memory of the little noise Danny made when his fist connected, so he breaks it anyway. Like a bull in a china shop. "Danny?"

"Yeah, Rus?"

"Don't… don't make me do that again."

"'M sorry," Danny says, even though neither of them could've predicted it and it just as easily could've been him. "I won't."

"Swear?" Rusty asks, feeling oddly like a sixth grade girl.

"On my mother's grave," Danny says, and Rusty laughs because Danny's mother's grave has been dug up three times already. "Yeah, I swear."

"Good," Rusty says, and then he strokes his chin with his less-fucked-up hand like there's a beard there instead of just six hours of stubble (Danny'd mocked him into shaving every morning, _all the better to be an innocent college student with, my dear)_ and says, "Debbie’s in Manhattan, right?"

"Yeah, what— oh."

"BQE, baby," Rusty says with a grin.

"I always liked Queens," Danny replies, a similar smile gracing his face.

Rusty pokes Danny's shoulder, mainly for a distraction from Danny's smile (and split lip). "You can be the college student this time."

Danny makes a noise of protest. "I'm too tired to argue this right now," he says, in what Rusty's sure Danny thinks is his Intimidating Voice (again, it's a lot less intimidating when the Benadryl seems to be involved in a devious case of subterfuge against Danny’s tongue), "but I'm gonna take a nap, and when I wake up, I'm fighting this like a lawyer fighting geese."

"You just had to put the breadcrumbs in his coat, didn't you?" Rusty snorts. "Alright, take your little nap. I'll be here when you wake up."

"'S that a threat?" Danny mumbles, and then he closes his one open eye again and leaves Rusty staring down at his drowsy face.

"Think of it as a promise," Rusty says. "I'm sure that'll help you sleep better at night."

Danny grins his I'm Very Much About To Fall Asleep On You, Trademark Danny Ocean, grin. "Y'always do."

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! feel free to drop a kudos/comment below, and come scream at me on tumblr (same url as my ao3) about these gay ass hoes!!!


End file.
